Recently, I bought a number of vintage lenses such as Carl Zeiss 35mm Flektogon from East Germany and also some Soviet-made lenses like the Jupiter 9 and Helios 44M. I bought these to replace some of the lenses that I sold that were medium format that I had been using on my Nikon D800 for several years. In fact one of my early posts in this blog refers to those lenses that replaced some more modern Nikon lenses - one in particular that was totalled in a fall of a cliff (24-70mm). But that’s another story. Just prior to buying these vintage lenses I bought a Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85 mm F1 .4 for those occasions where I might need a larger image such as the Nikon D 800 can provide but with a good quality lens with excellentllent resolution. It’s turned out to be a very impressive piece of glass. But more interestingly I combined it with an XPro close-up lens super II F500. The resulting sample image can be seen here. I’ve always been wary of using any other glass in combination with a lens I know to be of exceptional quality like the 85mm CZ for fear of diminishing the quality of the image. That did not seem to be the case here.

Carl Zeiss 85mm f1.4 with XPro F500 close-up lens

While not exactly macro I was particularly pleased at what could be achieved with this lens. BTW, the CU lens was not attached via a threaded adapter (which I’ve since ordered), I just held it up to the lens. The image has not been sharpened or touched up in any way save a small amount of exposure compensation. I couldn’t achieve this result with any of the other lenses. Both the sharpness and bokeh for my liking are superb. Message me for more details if you’re thinking of this combination. The CZ lens came in at around AU$1100 and the XPro $55. Both are second hand but mint condition. PS. Although I still have the D800, I have an adapter for the Sony A7III which more easily accommodates the vintage lenses.